“substantial harm to television program copyright owners,”
Give me a fucking break
Won’t somebody think of the television program copyright owners??
I think of them when I dream about them facing a firing squad.
But then who would finance the production of television programs?
I dream of a world where we are free to create art without having dance for Capital
There will always be tasks that people don’t want to do, and they will require compensation for motivation.
The level of compensation determines your level of society.
It already does
It probably also had better user experience than all of them
It’s amazing how I can run a better streaming service from my basement than the ones I pay for.
If there is no need,such places would not exist
If there was no DEMAND it wouldn’t exist. It exists illegally specifically because it can’t be done legally at the price point. That doesn’t mean anyone needs it, all the content is presumably available elsewhere. It just costs money and people don’t want to pay money.
I don’t want to pay money either, I’m just not high minded about it.
Digital media is culture. And culture should not be reserved for rich people, in my opinion.
If you’re saying “you should not restrict ALL culture to rich people” then, we’re not. There is plenty of culture available for free on YouTube, or on broadcast TV channels, or FreeVee. And paying for one paid subscription doesn’t make you rich, $10/mo or whatever is an accessible price for a subset of digital media to a non-rich person. And those libraries are sufficiently large that you would not run out of material to watch even if you only had one service.
If you’re saying “everyone should be provided literally all digital content for free at all times” that is a pretty extreme position which does sort of break the economics of any content being produced. Digital content would have to be plastered in way more ads or be government subsidized or something to have the money to make more of it. That’s not a political position I’d be on board with.
If you just want the current system but with you being allowed to download the stuff you want to see on services you don’t pay for…again, there’s an argument for that, but let’s not pretend it’s some high minded one. It’s selfish. You probably have the money to pay for HBO Max for one month to watch the new Game of Thrones and the Barbie movie but you don’t want to pay money and it’s really easy not to.
Yea, I understand the problems you describe and I am not a genius who knows how to solve that problem. I want to point out that I consider ads and tracking as privacy invasive.
In my opinion the solution should be a way where we can ensure loss of media at all cost where the whole humanity has access to all human culture and knowledge in a reasonable timeframe (not the livelong time the copyrights hold today)
And competition on the market should be about the best way to deliver content, not about on delivering which content.
Want is not the issue. You can want anything and everything but unless you are able to pay, the need arises for access to the material for a price you can pay that the “legal” owners either dont comprehend or refuse to in the name of greed.
That doesn’t track at all. I can’t afford a Lamborghini so the need arises for access to stolen Lamborghinis for cheap? It’s absolutely not a need, you can just go without or only access the free media that is available to you. In the car example, I can just buy an old Civic.
If it’s stealing bread to feed your family that is one thing, because it’s an actual need. If it’s getting stuff because you want the more expensive version instead of the version you can afford, there’s no need there.
The ethical argument is that there’s no one harmed because you can’t afford it anyway. It’s not that you need it like a starving man’s bread.
Just one specific point of contention. A physical object is very different from an object that can infinitely and effortlessly be copied with 0 degradation of that thing.
I think you are making a good argument and but maybe not the best example.
I think there is significance in the difference that needs to be accounted for in any discussion of piracy as theft.
It is currently, and has been for a long time, legal to copy music from the radio or movies and tv shows from a broadcast(but not pay per view, or copys for distrubution) or go to a library and borrow whatever interesting (to you) media they have.
Yeah semantics is a bitch
The group used “sophisticated computer scripts” and software to scour piracy services (including the Pirate Bay and Torrentz) for illegal copies of TV episodes, which they then downloaded and hosted on Jetflicks’ servers, according to federal prosecutors.
They probably used Sonarr and Radarr and called it a day (or similar off-the-shelf tools available on GitHub). It’s not very sophisticated at all. That combined with Jellyfin and a VPN (or Usenet or a country that doesn’t care about piracy) and you have your own up and running. You could also just use free sites with an ad blocker instead of paying $10/mo like the service this article is about charged.
Unrelated to all of this: https://rentry.co/megathread
Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
For the elderly folk who write and enforce the laws that caused this to come to pass, sufficiently advanced technology just means more complex than notepad
The only thing I’m pisseed about is the fact that I was unaware of its existence. Fuck the system
You might be overestimating how much content that was. Streaming services try to maintain an illusion of neverending content but last I saw except for prime, the amount of content they offer has been trending down.
Those numbers are fairly accessible for an average person with 3 or 4 large hard drives.
deleted by creator
Proving Netflix could be replaced by five hard working people.
Proving Netflix could be
replacedoutdone by five hard working people.Proving Netflix should
couldbereplacedoutdone by five hard working people.Things are easier if you can steal stuff. And operate on a small scale.
They didn’t need the army of lawyers to get license deals, so that’s not a fair comparison.
Its almost like its unecessary shit made up in order to keep profits away from working people artificially
Yeah its almost like if we didn’t keep extending copyright protections a bunch of stuff would be in the public domain and any streaming service could offer it without having to deal with licensing.
I mean that’s all well and good, but then how would the very deserving shareholders get dividends?
Won’t somebody think of the shareholders!?
It’s true that Hollywood is corrupt and csuite pay is absurd, but those deals are the only mechanism by which ANY money makes it to the writers, actors and staff who deserve it
It’s the exclusivity bullshit that gets me.
It could be: New movie is released! Anyone who pays the price tag gets to stream it!
But no, we must bidding war gouge.
On top of that, X Y and Z services exist in America, but not in other countries, so in this other country, everything is on Netflix, while I had to jump between three different services at one point just to watch Stargate
Or fund new content
Their scale was also an insignificant fraction of what Netflix has, making the point even more irrelevant.
The best figure I could find on Jetflicks user count was 37k, where as Netflix has 269 million users.
Prices should go down with scale not up though.
There’s initial investment on the initial servers (and the software), and afterwards it should be a linear increase of server costs per user, with some bumps along the way to interconnect those servers.
The cost also scales per content. Because that means more caching servers per user and bigger databases, and licenses.
So this service has less users and more content, it should be way more expensive. The only reason they are cheaper is because they don’t pay those licenses.
The cost of storage in this case is more or less irrelevant - traffic is what matters here. You’re also not getting any mentionable bulk discount on the servers for that matter.
The key is that you can engineer things in completely different way when you have trivial amounts of traffic hitting your systems - you can do things that will not scale in any way, shape or form.
If we get rid of the licensing we get rid of the lawyers.
If you get rid of licensing you get rid of the content
Nope. People will still make content. It’ll be on far less of a budget, but that didn’t stop the Film School generation of independent films in the 1970s (before which you had to sell your life and soul and beating heart to a studio). In between all the schlock were the occasional arty films we consider classics today.
And then there’s government subsidization of art projects, as per the National Endowment of the Arts.
I think the MCU movies, the DC movies, the many studio iterations of Spiderman have shown us what capitalism eventually churns out. Sony actually chose this path content as product the same resort to formula that plagued the music industry in the 1980s (and drove the Hip Hop Independent movement of the next half-century).
We just need to empower artists. Make sure they don’t have to moonlight as restaurant wait staff in order to eat and pay rent while they create, and make sure they have access to half-decent (not necessarily high end) hardware with which to do their thing. And yes, as Sturgeon observes, most of it will be schlock, but through sheer quantity of content we’ll get more gems than Hollywood is putting out.
If you take away the ability to own and control your intellectual property, then you won’t be empowered.
Licensing art allows creators to earn a living off of their hard work.
Not in the US or the EU. If you make music in the States, then RCA or Sony owns your content, not you, and when they decide they’ve paid you enough (which is much less than they’re getting) then they still own your stuff. Also, if you make an amazing film or TV series ( examples: Inception, Firefly ) and the moguls don’t like it, they’ll make sure it tanks or at least doesn’t get aftermarket support, which is why Inception doesn’t have any video games tie-ins, despite being a perfect setting for video games.
Artists are empowered in their ability to produce art. If they have to worry about hunger and shelter, then they make less art, and art narrowly constrained to the whims of their masters. Artists are not empowered by the art they’ve already made, as that has to be sold to a patron or a marketing institution.
No, we’d get more and better art by feeding and housing everyone (so no one has to earn a living ) and then making all works public domain in the first place.
Intellectual property is a construct, and it’s corruption even before it was embedded in the Constitution of the United States has only assured that old art does not get archived.
I think yes, an artist needs to eat, which is why most artists (by far) have to wait tables and drive taxicabs and during all that time on the clock, not make art. The artists not making art far outnumber the artists that get to make art. And a small, minority subset of those are the ones who profit from art or even make a living from their art, a circumstance that is perpetually precarious.
But I also think the public needs a body of culture, and as the Game of Thrones era showed us, culture and profit run at odds. The more expensive art is, the more it’s confined to the wealthy, and the less it actually influences culture. Hence we should just feed, clothe and home artists along with everyone else, whether or not they produce good or bad art. And we’ll get culture out of it.
You can argue that a world of guaranteed meals and homes is not the world we live in, but then I can argue that piracy (and other renegade action) absolutely is part of the world we live in and will continue to thrive so long as global IP racketeering continues. Thieves and beggars, never shall we die.
Sorry, I’m not going to read all that, but it seems like you’re upset about the shitty deals made by record labels and other large corporations, not intellectual property rights.
Did they make the shows too?
Does Netflix make shows? Or does it slam its name onto filmmakers it pays to make content? If so, one of those things simply requires throwing cash at people, which I think is a skill that most people can learn.
Did the pirate site pay anyone to make new shows?
They had to operate under the radar to avoid the law, so you know the answer to your question
So Netflix actually pays for shows to get made, so when everyone pays for Netflix, it lets everyone enjoy them. Pirate sites only extract value from the hard work of the producers, without paying them.
producers don’t make the content, they speak to the right people in their exclusive circles to finance it, put their name on it, and then pay the directors and actors a tiny fraction of what it earned
Okay, now tell me how pirate sites contribute to creation of said content
Does Netflix? Or do they pay production companies for content?
They use the subscription money to pay production studios. What did the pirate site use the subscription money for?
Servers, electricity, bandwidth, blackjack and hookers.
The only reason all companies prices go up these days is for CEO pay packages
I think it’s more for major shareholders (which includes CEOs, of course)
Like Boeing’s CEO making 300 million… imagine 300 people who worked their ass off could make million. Or 1500 hard workers could be making 200k. But nah, let’s just drag these huge bags of money into this one asshole’s account. Oh there were a couple of crashes right? 👍 Our thoughts and prayers 🙏. But not our money wagons.
They’re here doing everyone a service. Why are there resources to prosecute this but not like elon musk’s insider trading?
Five men convicted by the court of the high seas for being absolute chads
Nobody gives a shit, you’re not doing enough to punish trump for his obvious, literally filmed and recorded crimes.
This is the equivalent of the cops celebrating after beating peaceful college protesters while pissing their pants and freezing while the uvalde kids were slaughtered and psychologically tortured.
You’re focusing on the non victory and ignoring the failures. Cowards.
When cops only legal responsibility is to enforce the law, and the laws are written to protect corporate interests, of course they will stand outside the school and arrest protesters. SCOTUS has ruled that way so many times that “to serve and protect” is literally gaslighting.
Say it again, friend.
Nobody gives a shit, you’re not doing enough to punish trump for his obvious, literally filmed and recorded crimes.
This is the equivalent of the cops celebrating after bearing peaceful college protesters while pissing their pants and freezing while the uvalde kids were slaughtered and psychologically tortured.
You’re focusing on the non victory and ignoring the failures. Cowards.
This guy GETS it.
say it again, friend, but in french
Tout le monde s’en fout, vous ne faites pas assez pour punir Trump pour ses crimes évidents, littéralement filmés et enregistrés.
C’est l’équivalent des flics qui se réjouissent d’avoir abattu des manifestants pacifiques à l’université tout en se pissant dessus et en se gelant pendant que les enfants d’uvalde se faisaient massacrer et torturer psychologiquement.
Vous vous concentrez sur la non-victoire et ignorez les échecs. Lâches.
say it again, friend, but in dutch
Non
well alright, but I’m going to have to report this
Honestly pretty funny to call the site “Jetflix” and advertise it as nothing but aviation videos. Nobody would know what you’re up to until they pay you.
How much you wanna bet a aerospace nut subscribed to this because they love Jets, and immediately reported this site to the authorities because he got the avengers movies rather than Airbus maintenance videos or something…
Pretty stupid though to run this site out of the USA. Terrible opsec. They really just seemed to trust that nobody who cares would ever figure out what they were doing. Plenty of similar sites out there that don’t even need to hide what they are because they are well outside of American jurisdiction.
They solved a problem people had after the fragmentation :)
This is despicable. What specific service was this? So I know how to avoid it if it should resurface.
Not only does it say that in the first paragraph, it says it here
Five men were convicted for their part in operating Jetflicks, one of the largest illegal streaming services in the U.S., officials said.
Why in the world would you do this in the US?
I mean we’re dumb kids until they raid us.
There are resellers in the US who will set you up with the infrastructure to do it yourself. You don’t need much and it’s less expensive than you’d think, almost turnkey.
Demand is more than high enough in poor areas too, they probably made a really good return before it shut down.
they probably made a really good return before it shut down.
Part of the sentence was to forfeit $1million in profits, I’d say they did pretty well for themselves.
I’m pretty sure the similar exists in other places too. You could host it in AWS in China or Bahrain and save yourself a bunch of risk.
My use of the word despicable instead of disgusting probably threw you off
I just didn’t think the meme fit when it already said where
I see. Sorry for the offence.
Jetflicks, which charged $9.99 per month for the streaming service, generated millions of dollars in subscription revenue and caused “substantial harm to television program copyright owners,
The ownership class will tremble before a communist revolution!
Yeah that competition really did demonstrate what an awful service all those media monopolies provided.
To be fair, the service they provide isn’t hosting the videos, it’s making them, which I assume costs a bit more
Netflix service started as hosting only.
correction… Netflix started by mailing DVDs, even before Redbox was a thing
Ah. Analogue hosting. But they definitely didn’t start producing content.
The service they provide (from a perspective external to obligatory capitalism) is less about making them, but providing a framework by which people engaged in artistic expression and development get paid and permitted to survive.
As the COVID-19 Lockdown furloughs demonstrated to us, art manifests so long as people are fed and need something to do. Healthy humans can’t couch-potato for two weeks without fidgeting and whittling wood into bears. And the great resignation that followed showed that enough people were able to make it lucrative (that is, work out marketing and fulfillment enough to make it profitable enough to quit their prior job) that it lowered worker supply that we were able to contest the shit treatment, low pay and toxic work environments that were normal before the epidemic.
It gets worse in other industries like big pharma in which the state provides vast grants for R&D of drugs and treatments, but the company keeps all the proceeds. Contrast the space program, which is why memory foam (the material) is in the public domain, as is a fuckton of electronics and computer technologies.
The service they provide (from a perspective external to obligatory capitalism) is less about making them, but providing a framework by which people engaged in artistic expression and development get paid and permitted to survive.
If it is art that other people value then that framework already existed(and there are many others who created similar tools for it) so I don’t see it as particularly valuable.
Contrast the space program, which is why memory foam (the material) is in the public domain, as is a fuckton of electronics and computer technologies.
There is a compelling argument that tens of billions of dollars being used productively to research anything would have at least some useful results. Memory foam, cordless drills, etc could have been developed much more cheaply than the Apollo program, GPS is extremely valuable, but Apollo wasn’t a necessary precursor to geostationary orbit.
If it is art that other people value then that framework already existed
From Wikipedia on Vincent Van Gogh: Van Gogh’s work began to attract critical artistic attention in the last year of his life. After his death, Van Gogh’s art and life story captured public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius
The art we get from pre-made frameworks emerged because people figured out they like art, and then someone capitalized on that. Or in cases of monarchs and governments, they created a fund to allow artists to do their thing instead of waiting tables.
There is a compelling argument that tens of billions of dollars being used productively to research anything would have at least some useful results.
For every $1 spent on the moonshots, we got $14. Feel free to look for other investments, but big science really has proven itself.
From Wikipedia on Vincent Van Gogh: Van Gogh’s work began to attract critical artistic attention in the last year of his life. After his death, Van Gogh’s art and life story captured public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius
I don’t really understand how this follows from what I said.
For every $1 spent on the moonshots, we got $14. Feel free to look for other investments, but big science really has proven itself.
Do you have a source for that? (And what that claim actually means), afterall, plenty of “essential” inventions in the modern day(including the base of modern rocketry) came from weapons development- does that make war a good investment? (Of course its not 1-to-1 because war is destructive, but my point is putting a lot of effort and smart people into almost anything will lead to a lot of innovation)
I don’t really understand how [The bit on Van Gogh – that he was only posthumously appreciated in the art sector] follows from what I said.
My following paragraph is about that. Art often happens before the framework made to create it. In fact, when we have set up studio, they’re already doing knock-offs, trying to repeat prior successes.
For every $1 spent on the moonshots, we got $14
Do you have a source for that?
This came up during a TED talk on the benefits of investing in big science. On an unrelated research effort, I found the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 which Eisenhower signed during his freak out over Sputnik, and the big grant to Fairchild Superconductor which kicked off the electronics boom in Silicon Valley (~San Jose, California), so the $14 value is certainly plausible.
To be fairer nobody asked them to produce content. They decided to create it because it’s cheaper that licensing the actual good stuff.
eh some of it is good, I personally wouldn’t want to just watched licensed shows from 50 years ago
Hence why copyright was originally in the 10-20 year range.
Movie star isn’t supposed to be a dream job that makes you fabulously rich, but a decent living.
Interestingly, musical artists who work off the web will do exactly that: Tour and make hundreds of thousands instead of millions (in the aughts and 2010s, so pre-inflation), rather than rolling the dice with the record labels.
Movie star isn’t supposed to be a dream job that makes you fabulously rich, but a decent living.
I mean, supposed to according to who?
Capitalist ideologues, for one. I remember in Macroeconomics class that wealth desparity will destroy your economy and then your civilization if you let it get out of hand.
So when (for example) we have eight guys that own more than the poorer half of the world population, that’s a bad sign for every economy on the planet, and is going to cause way more problems than merely discontent and social unrest.
Love how they make this sound like some incredible feat. When you aren’t bound to license agreements, turns out it’s actually very easy to have a “massive” content library. Literally the only hurdle is storage space.
I mean, distributing it isn’t a small feat. Plus you need to manage subscriptions, billings, CMS, a front end to navigate the content, etc.
That’s no small amount of work, even if they used out of the box solutions for many layers.
Both Wikipedia and Stack Overflow just have a few dozen fast servers despite being some of the world’s highest trafficked websites
The entire content of the wikipedia fits in a pen drive.
Streaming video is a lot more expensive than text and images.
That is just the text content, Wikipedia has pictures and videos as well. Not to mention the other Wikimedia projects
I doubt Wikimedia streams even 0.1% of what netflix does.
All of those things already exist. Typically it’s just a Plex server running on a cloud service.
Yeah like… Netflix has peering agreements and whatnot but… It’s not 2005.
5 people could do it though.
Yeah it costs, depending on quality of course.
My 14 TB disks are filling up faster than I expected and I am not close to Netflix’s catalogue.Yeah, I got a 14tb drive back in February and it’s 90 percent full already. My media collection will always grow to fill the space available.
You guys wouldn’t happen to have any tips on DVD ripping would you? I’d like to go all digital but I just can’t make Handbrake work.
This is my fork of an existing solution
https://github.com/JustAnotherIdea/MakeMKV-Auto-Rip-Concurrent-Ripping-and-Blu-Ray-Fix
I’ve never gotten Handbrake to do anything I wanted. DVD Shrink, on the other hand, is one of my top five most-used apps. It’s quite old, but DVD encryption hasn’t changed since its release.
“When a hero comes along . . .”
